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Lesvos History

Historically, Lesvos is known for many who lived there. Terpander, the composer, and Arion, the poet, were born on Lesvos in the 7th Century BC. Artistotle and Epicurus taught at a school of philosophy on Lesvos. Sappho, on of the greatest poets of ancient Greece, was born here in 630 BC. More recently the painter Theophilos and the Nobel Prize-winning poet Odysseus Elytis were born on the island.

Famous poems by Sappho were all but eliminated from existence during book burnings in 1073, when they were judged morally offensive. What does remain survived by accident.

The Turks ruled from 1462 to 1912 and many Ottoman houses and buildings remain.